‘Game of Thrones’ Directors Recall their most iconic moments on set

‘Game of Thrones’ Directors Recall their most iconic moments on set

As Game of Thrones comes to an end, the directors behind the making of the epic eight season drama by HBO talk about their favorite moments in the show. They also reveal the effects on the crew after they were required to shoot those scenes as well as about the impact it has on the audience. All of these things revealed in an interview are the favorite moments of the directors behind ‘Game of Thrones.’

They begin the list with the Red Wedding, which is more or less the most impactful scene in Game of Thrones. Reportedly, David Nutter deviously wanted fans and viewers to be lulled into the scene with a sense of ease and the slow and pleasurable pace of a party. And once they were sure that what they had shot thus far would be enough to make any viewer feel safe, they simply decided to bring out the real reason the scene is called the Red Wedding and shock the audience into oblivion. This scene also left Michelle Fairley too traumatized to speak about the episode for a week.

“I remember when Robb crawls over to Talisa and is cradling her in his arms, seeing her life pass away, I was crouched down, whispering quite intimately to Richard [Madden] about relationships and love and all that kind of stuff,” recounts Nutter.”And I turned around and three or four of the make-up ladies had lost it. They were sobbing. It was that kind of situation for everyone.”

David Nutter said that when they’re making scenes like these, they partially already know what’s going to happen and they rehearse it so many times that they more or less get used to what’s going on. Hence, even if what’s being shown can be extremely grim, it still doesn’t resemble what the viewer actually sees in the actual episode. He says that he is happy about how his fans tend to be traumatized about the devious tricks which he pulled on screen.

“When you’re directing television you rarely get that immediate response from people,” said Nutter. “So when I started to see all of that happening, I felt very good about how it all came out. People still tell me how it affected them the most.”

Next in line was Neil Marshall who spoke about his two favorite scenes from the series including ‘Watchers on the Wall’ and ‘Blackwater.’ He reports that he had quite a lot of fun filming these scenes and that most of the things which made the heroes look cool in these scenes were actually his own ideas that deviated from the script.

“Stannis just stood on the beach and signalled, rather than getting into the thick of it with his soldiers,” Marshall recounted his time while directing ‘Blackwater.’ “I wanted our hero-king up a ladder doing suicidal things. It’s very important to give everybody something to do in these battles.”

As far as ‘Watchers on the Wall’ is concerned, it was his idea to film the sequence in a 360 degree panning shot to capture an all-around view of the entire battlefield and give the audience a better estimate or experience of the scale on which the battle was fought. It took them seven takes to get it right, but they finally managed to do it in the end.

“It links all the characters together,” reported Marshall. “We worked out a system where each section began fighting just as the camera arrived at them, so they hadn’t run out of moves by the time it reached them. It was the first thing we did that night and we nailed it in seven takes.”

Apart from this, he also paid special attention to the scenes where characters died and choose to use slow motion in such places in order to freeze the moment as a distinct occurrence on the screen where nothing else matters anymore.

While these scenes were surely amazing, key players are reporting that this season is going to be nothing like what fans have seen in Game of Thrones thus far. They are even going as far as calling it a sequence of six epic movies instead of episodes. With scenes like these and all the promises given by the crew and staff, the only thing which remains is to catch the season premiere on the 14th of April.

Even wine couldn’t cheer Emilia Clarke after reading the final Games Of Thrones scripts

Dany or as she likes to remind everyone who is at the receiving end of her wrath, Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons, wandered for “three hours, aimlessly” around London after reading the final Game of Thrones scripts. While talking to Press Association in a recent interview, Emilia Clarke said, “It might as well have been raining and I would’ve just walked in it not knowing what to do.”

The last days of her shooting as Daenerys were filled with sadness and “loads of tears”, and “equal amounts of fear” similar to her filming the first-day scene. Clarke couldn’t bring herself out of her dejectedness even with the help of wine, “That was the moment I realized that alcohol can also be a depressant,” she said. “I was kind of nursing a glass of wine going, ‘I don’t know why I’m not getting any happier from this.'”

Is it just the ending of this epic show that’s having this profound effect on our Khaleesi, or is there something darker and sinister waiting around the corner for us viewers in Game of Thrones season 8 which is the cause for it? Let’s just hope it is the former but knowing the darkness that underlines the show, we shouldn’t be surprised if something of a sledgehammer comes at us by the time the show ends, as has been teased by Harrington.

When Clarke received the final scripts of Game Of Thrones, she was having tea with a friend and immediately left for home to read. While talking about her immediate reaction to the scripts for season 8, in a recent cover story for EW, Clarke said she read the scripts in one late night sitting, “I turned to my best mate and was like, ‘Oh my God! I gotta go! I gotta go!’ And I completely flipped out. Genuinely the effect it had on me was profound. That sounds insanely pretentious, but I’m an actor, so I’m allowed one pretentious adjective per season.”

Clarke says she will miss Dany’s “clear-sighted straight-backed calmness” as she gets “energy from her.”

Sean Bean reflects on his time as Ned Stark on Game of Thrones, the unaired pilot, and more

It’s been a really long time since we last saw Eddard ‘Ned’ Stark on Game of Thrones. I mean, the very foundation of this epic series began with him. Most of the people (non-book readers) believed that Ned was ultimately going to be the protagonist of the story – all characters, and major plot points revolving until the ninth episode of the Season 1 proved us otherwise. Yet much like Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark – who’ve been dead for a long time – Ned too had a propelling role in the series. The biggest example being his execution that led to the War of Five Kings that eventually leads us to the current events in the series. But, what does the actor who played the role think?

Well, Sean Bean – the actor who had played the role of Ned recently talked to Entertainment Weekly reflecting on his time on Game of Thrones, his role in the unaired pilot, and more. Let’s dive into it.

Ned Stark – being one of the good characters in the series was an honourable man, a great friend, and a true sibling to his sister Lyanna. I can imagine, how important it was for him to keep the lineage of Jon Snow a secret- he kept from everyone including his wife Catelyn. He was even ready to trade his honour for it as it could have been torn the Seven Kingdoms apart. The secret could have died with him unless not discovered by Bran and Sam. When asked if “anyone from the show gave him a courtesy call to reveal the truth about Jon Snow’s parents”, Sean revealed:

“Like with everything with Game of Thrones, it was kept very dark and secret. I think that’s the kind of magic and the glory of Game of Thrones… that’s why it’s so stunning and breathtaking when these secrets are revealed.”

Dan Weiss and David Benioff did a fantastic job not only adapting the pages from a book into a TV series but with the casting of the series too! But did they tell Sean about his character in advance?

“Yeah, we met for lunch in Soho, six or seven years ago now, before we started the pilot. We had a really good chat, and I was very thrilled to be asked to play the role. I think it was only myself and Peter cast at the time. I was very thrilled about the whole idea. I didn’t actually know at that time how enormous and massive this series would become. I was just getting my head around the part, as we all were. None of us really could’ve imagined it would be such a big-scale, tantalizing drama. Yeah, that was the beginning of the story for me. And, of course, I knew I wasn’t going to last very long. I accepted that.”

When asked if the showrunners told him about the secret of Jon Snow’s parentage during that meeting, Sean replied:

“Not really. They said that some things happened, there were quite dramatic twists and turns. They let me know what they were within the first [season]. It was enough just keeping up with these intricate and complex storylines, with all the families and different worlds. Any more information would’ve probably been overload. As you can see, the death and how it’s developed, I think there’s only so much you can take at once. They only reveal what they want you to know, and that’s good, I think. That’s what makes it so exciting to find out.”

Ned Stark is one of the characters in the story besides Jon Snow who resonates really well with other characters in the story although his son (nephew-in-disguise) seems a bit too brooding at times. On this, Sean Bean suggests:

“He’s very honourable, he’s very honest, he’s a man of integrity, and he does the dirty work, as he does at the beginning when he chops off the guy’s head. But he’s a man who’s very fair-minded, and he’ll stick to his principles through thick and thin, regardless of who he’s up against. With him going to King’s Landing and getting involved with such backstabbers, it’s something he wasn’t used to, and certainly not at that level. I think it was quite tragic to see him chipped away by these people until he was really struggling, and he was in very deep.”

The original – unaired pilot episode of Game of Thrones had a lot of Game of Thrones had a lot of differences especially some cast members were replaced like Tamzin Merchant with Emilia Clarke for Daenerys Targaryen. When asked about those differences, Sean revealed:

“I remember a scene with Bran in the old tree and [his parents are] talking to him about life. He was very young at the time when Isaac was playing the part. There are some nice scenes with [Williams as Arya]. I quite enjoyed those scenes because there was a lot of horrible backstabbing going on, and I think those scenes stood out because they were very natural and people could identity with them: a father and his children. I also remember the banquet, which was quite interesting. We shot it in Scotland, and it was a banquet with King Robert. All the families were coming together, there was a real feeling of this horrible tension, which represents what we did afterwards.”

Lastly, talking about his last day of filming and what he remembered about him playing the role for the last time, Sean ended by saying:

“I remember filming that day. The death, that was wonderful because it was so unexpected. I thought it was amazing how they shot it. But I died, and then I had to do some scenes from earlier in the episode, so it wasn’t the end for me. We were in Malta; it was very hot. It was very colourful. Everyone was there, and with things like that, there’s a sort of gallows humour to it. It’s awful what’s happening, and you start giggling and laughing. When the head fell off, there were mistakes. It didn’t quite work out sometimes. It was quite comical. So it breaks the ice a bit.”

What were your thoughts on this interview of Sean Bean and did his character in the story deserve true justice in the series? Tell us in the comments.

Kit Harington pulls a Jon Snow in Late Show interview with Stephen Colbert

Earlier this week, in a battle of wits worthy of Littlefinger, Late Show host Stephen Colbert grilled Harington in wildly creative ways about the 8th and final season of Game of Thrones (set to premiere on April 14) as the British actor tried his best to feign ignorance – Jon Snow style.

What ensued is of course hilarity, but also a hearty conversation about the extraordinary impact Game of Thrones has had on those involved with the show, and the world at large.

From Season 1 to Season 8, everything from the actor’s beard to the scale of his job has changed. But the one thing that bothers him the most is his fur coat, which got progressively heavier and smellier with the seasons. Reason for this? Harington is prompt with his answer:

“The costume designer hates actors, obviously!”

Speaking of the world though, Harington is anxious that a part of the audience might be taking away the wrong lessons from the show, specifically a few current world leaders.

“I’ve got this theory that we kind of screwed the political landscape”, Harington says amidst general laughter, “I felt like that, you know, certain political figures tried to emulate Joffrey, and things went a bit wrong?”

Harington himself is perhaps the best example of the life-changing phenomenon that GoT has been. Not only he went from an unknown drama school major to one of the highest paid stars in television today, he also met and fell in love with his future wife Rose Leslie on the GoT sets.

The feisty Ygritte from beyond the wall may have died in Jon Snow’s arms, but Leslie and Harington’s off-screen romance fared a lot better, with the two of them tying the knot in June last year.

Leslie is no more privileged than the rest of us as far as spoilers are concerned, though. As Harington revealed:

“She has guessed every single possible outcome bar the one that actually happens.”

Which is just as well, because according to Harington, the last time he actually obliged her request for spoilers, Leslie was angry with him for days!

Colbert and the rest of us fans can’t even be angry though, because Harington is not letting anything out. With all the craze and publicity going on, that’s an uphill job. As Harington says, he can’t even lie for some peace of mind, because,

“Then that gets picked up and they pick it apart, and anything that might be true they narrow that out it.”

The guessing game did end on a high note though, as Harington was quite approving of Colbert’s last shot at a possible ending for Game of Thrones season 8; Jon Snow becoming the father to a boy named – wait for it – Tony Stark AKA Ironman! Now that’s a crossover we all can get behind.